About the South African Journal of Information Management

This page includes information on the focus and scope of the South African Journal of Information Management as well as the policies and publication procedures. For details on how to prepare and submit a manuscript via the online manuscript submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

The South African Journal of Information Management is aimed at both the academic and business worlds, whereby the content is both innovative and critical in its approach, offering insightful research material that can be used to further the application of sound information management practices.

The aims of the South African Journal of Information Management are as follows:

To communicate original peer-reviewed contributions on all aspects of Information Management to the South African academic and financial/business environments in particular, and the international community in general. Disciplines included are:

information management

information management systems

database management

online information environment

online social networking applications

social media and its practical application

virtual communities

information technology

information security in organisations

knowledge management

knowledge economy

indigenous knowledge systems

records management

intellectual capital

business intelligence

competitive intelligence

information entrepreneurship

learning organisations

innovations in information

etc.

To distribute contributions from the younger generations of academics, researchers and students, which have not necessarily been peer-reviewed but are of exceptionally high quality and originality.

To provide a forum to exchange new ideas, products, news and opinions in the form of regular columns.

To develop and maintain a scholarly, Web-based journal, representing a model in which various information formats of communicating information are being utilised.

Historic overview of South African Journal of Information Management ↑

Published since June 1999, The South African Journal of Information Management is available to scientists and practitioners worldwide. The management will maintain the standard required for international indexing services.

Articles are citable. Previous issues are archived for permanency and are searchable onsite.

The target markets of the South African Journal of Information Management are:

Open Access refers to free and unrestricted access via the Internet to articles published in the South African Journal of Information Management. This free access has usage limitations as stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) usage license. The license allows redistribution and reuse of all articles on the condition that the South African Journal of Information Management is appropriately credited.

The South African Journal of Information Management has a double-blinded peer review process. Manuscripts are initially examined by editorial staff and are sent by the Editor-in-Chief to two expert independent reviewers, either directly or by a Section Editor. The editors do not inform the reviewers of the identity of the author(s). The reviewers’ identities are not disclosed to the authors either. The reviewers’ comments as well as recommendations regarding an article’s form may be passed on to the corresponding author and may also include suggested revisions. Manuscripts that are not approved for publication will not be returned to the submitting author in any format. Please note that AOSIS OpenJournals do not retain copies of rejected articles.

The peer review process aims to ensure that all published articles:

present the results of primary scientific research

report results that have not been published elsewhere

are scientifically sound

provide new scientific knowledge where experiments, statistics and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail so that another researcher will be able to reproduce the experiments described

provide conclusions that are presented in an appropriate manner and are supported by the data

are presented in an intelligible and logic manner and are written in clear and unambiguous English

meet all applicable research standards with regard to the ethics of experimentation and research integrity

adhere to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.

The journal publisher, AOSIS OpenJournals, is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In the event of suspected plagiarism in submitted works CrossCheck is available to the editors of the South African Journal of Information Management to detect instances of overlapping and similar text. AOSIS OpenJournals endorses and applies the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which promotes integrity in peer-reviewed research publications.

The South African Journal of Information Management publishes one issue per year. Individual articles are published as soon as they are ready for publication by adding them to the table of contents of the 'current' volume and issue. In this way, the South African Journal of Information Management aims to speed up the process of manuscript publication from submission to becoming available on the website.

Special issues may be added on an ad hoc basis to the journal throughout a particular year and will form part of consecutive issues thereafter.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript via the submission system at any time by logging into the journal website’s personalised section.

Additionally, the South African Journal of Information Management uses the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system to create a distributed archiving system amongst participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

List of approved South African journals: Journals that do not appear in the abovementioned international indices but are published in South Africa and meet specific criteria may be included in this list.

In conclusion: the South African Journal of Information Management meets the criteria of the DoHET (see List of approved South African journals as maintained by the DoHET). It is therefore accredited and approved by the DoHET for its inclusion in the subsidy system for being a research publication for South Africa.